I'm in Love With My Car: Revisiting the Aesthetics of Petroleum in <em>Crash</em> (1996), <em>Death Proof</em> (2007), and <em>Titane</em> (2021)

Abstract

[eng] Building on Stephanie LeMenager’s work on petroculture, this paper reflects on how cinema can reorient the dominant aesthetics of petroleum not against, but through our affective attachment to cars. By reading Julia Ducournau’s Titane alongside David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof (2007), I show how the film unpacks the petrocultural identities while making oil not only visible but also palpably material and embodied. Titane playfully inhabits the dominant fossil imaginaries and, in the process, redraws the aesthetics of petroleum in intriguing ways. Ultimately, and perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, Ducournau’s film creates space for more sustainable futures based on new forms of kinship and the ethics of care.